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Famines in the manorial economy of eighteenth-century Poland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2022

Piotr Miodunka*
Affiliation:
Department of Economic and Social History, Cracow University of Economics, Poland
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Abstract

On the basis of eight available terriers of a large royal estate of Niepołomice in southern Poland and of the vital records of two parishes located on its area, all dating from the early eighteenth century, this article examines the effect of famines on the economic situation of both feudal lords and their peasant tenants. The restrictive framework of the second serfdom in Poland did not prevent two severe mortality crises at the time triggered by crop failures. The key hazards caused by the famines for demesne economy were shortages of corvée labour and peasant-owned draught animals. While the famine mortality that affected the peasants reported as farmers in the terriers was not high, the famines were conducive to peasant impoverishment and reshuffled groups of various financial statuses.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. The Niepołomice estate (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries).Source: Created by the author based on Ziemie polskie Korony w XVI w. Przestrzenna baza danych, Instytut Historii PAN im. Tadeusza Manteuffla <https://atlasfontium.pl> and K. Ostafin, M. Troll, K. Ślusarek et al., Historical Dataset of Administrative Units for Galicia 1857–1910 (2021) Harvard Dataverse, V2.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Registered births and deaths in Mikluszowice and Niepołomice parishes (1705–50).Source: Mikluszowice parish, Liber baptisatorum (LB) 1697–1711, 1711–23, 1723–40, Liber mortuorum (LM) 1660–1715, 1728–59; Niepołomice parish, LB 1668–1729, 1730–52, LM 1710–29, 1730–65.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Number of cultivated and abandoned ploughlands (Pol. role) and smallholdings (Pol. zagrody) in the Niepołomice estate.Source: CAHR, Zbiór Popielów, pp. 282, 283, 285, 286, 287, 288, 290.

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Figure 4. Distribution of peasant households in the Niepołomice estate.Source: See Figure 3.

Figure 4

Figure 5. Abandoned vs cultivated ploughlands per full tenant in the Niepołomice estate.Source: See Figure 3.

Figure 5

Figure 6. Draught animals owned by full tenants in the Niepołomice estate.Source: See Figure 3.

Figure 6

Figure 7. Changes in the tenant composition in the Mikluszowice complex between 1736 and 1739.Source: See Figure 3.

Figure 7

Figure 8. Peasant labour in the Niepołomice estate.Source: See Figure 3.